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"Jessica," he whispered.
"What did you say?" Siona asked.
Idaho could not answer. It was the face of Jessica resurrected out of a past he had believed gone forever, a genetic prank--Muad'Dib's mother recreated in new flesh.
The woman closed the curtain, leaving the memory of her features in Idaho's mind, an after-image which he knew he could never remove. She had been older than the Jessica who had shared their dangers on Dune--age-lines beside the mouth and eyes, the body a bit more full ...
More motherly, Idaho told himself. Then: Did I ever tell her ... who she resembled?
Siona tugged at his sleeve. "Do you wish to go in, to meet her?"
"No. This was a mistake."
Idaho started to turn back the way they had come, but the door of Irti's house was flung open. A young man emerged and closed the door behind him, turning then to confront Idaho.
Idaho guessed the youth's age at sixteen and there was no denying the parentage--that karakul hair, the strong features.
"You are the new one," the youth said. His voice had already deepened into manhood.
"Yes." Idaho found if difficult to speak.
"Why have you come?" the youth asked.
"It was not my idea," Idaho said. He found this easier to say, the words driven by resentment against Siona.
The youth looked at Siona. "We have had word that my father is dead." Siona nodded.
The youth returned his attention to Idaho. "Please go away and do not return. You cause pain for my mother."
"Of course," Idaho said. "Please apologize to the Lady Irti for this intrusion. I was brought here against my will."
"Who brought you?"
"The Fish Speakers," Idaho said.
The youth nodded once, a curt movement of the head. He looked once more at Siona. "I always thought that you Fish Speakers were taught to treat your own more kindly." With that, he turned and reentered the house, closing the door firmly behind him.
Idaho turned back the way they had come, grabbing Siona's arm as he strode away. She stumbled, then fell into step, disengaging his grasp.
"He thought I was a Fish Speaker," she said.
"Of course. You have the look." He glanced at her. "Why didn't you tell me that Irti was a Fish Speaker?"
"It didn't seem important."
"Oh."
"That's how they met."
They came to the intersection with the street from the square. Idaho turned away from the square, striding briskly up to the end where the village merged into gardens and orchards. He felt insulated by shock, his awareness recoiling from too much that could not be assimilated.
A low wall blocked his path. He climbed over it, heard Siona follow. Trees around them were in bloom, white flowers with orange centers where dark brown insects worked. The air was full of insect buzzing and a floral scent which reminded Idaho of jungle flowers from Caladan.
He stopped when he reached the crest of a hill where he could turn and look back down at Goygoa's rectangular neatness. The roofs were flat and black.
Siona sat down on the thick grass of the hilltop and embraced her knees.
"That was not what you intended, was it?" Idaho asked.
She shook her head and he saw that she was close to tears.
"Why do you hate him so much?" he asked.
"We have no lives of our own!"
Idaho looked down at the village. "Are there many villages like this one?"
"This is the shape of the Worm's Empire!"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing--if that's all you want."
"You're saying that this is all he allows?"
"This, a few market cities ... Onn. I'm told that even planetary capitals are just big villages."
"And I repeat: What's wrong with that?"
"It's a prison!"
"Then leave it."
"Where? How? You think we can just get on a Guild ship and go anywhere else, anywhere we want?" She pointed down toward Goygoa where the 'thopter could be seen off to one side, the Fish Speakers seated on the grass nearby. "Our jailers won't let us leave!"
"They leave," Idaho said. "They go anywhere they want."
"Anywhere the Worm sends them!"
She pressed her face against her knees and spoke, her voice muffled. "What was it like in the old days?"
"It was different, often very dangerous." He looked around at the walls which set off pastureland, gardens and orchards. "Here on Dune, there were no imaginary lines to show the limits of ownership on the land. It was all the Dukedom of the Atreides."
"Except for the Fremen."
"Yes. But they knew where they belonged--on this side of a particular escarpment ... or beyond where the pan turns white against the sand."
"They could go wherever they wanted!"
"With some limits."
"Some of us long for the desert," she said.
"You have the Sareer."
She lifted her head to glare at him. "That little thing!"
"Fifteen hundred kilometers by five hundred--not so little."
Siona got to her feet. "Have you asked the Worm why he confines us this way?"
"Leto's Peace, the Golden Path to insure our survival. That's what he says."
"Do you know what he told my father? I spied on them when I was a child. I heard him."
"What did he say?"
"He said he denies us most crises, to limit our forming forces. He said: 'People can be sustained by affliction, but I am the affliction now. Gods can become afflictions.' Those were his words, Duncan. The Worm is a sickness!"
Idaho did not doubt the accuracy of her recital, but the words failed to stir him. He thought instead of the Corrino he had been ordered to kill. Affliction. The Corrino, descendant of a Family which once had ruled this Empire, had been revealed as a softly fat middle-aged man who hungered after power and conspired for spice. Idaho had ordered a Fish Speaker to kill him, an act which had aroused Moneo to a fit of intense questioning.
"Why didn't you kill him yourself?"
"I wanted to see how the Fish Speakers performed."
"And your judgment of their performance?"
"Efficient."
But the death of the Corrino had inflicted Idaho with a sense of unreality. A fat little man lying in a pool of his own blood, an undistinguished shadow among the night shadows of a plastone street. It was unreal. Idaho could remember Muad'Dib saying: "The mind imposes this framework which it calls 'reality. ' That arbitrary framework has a tendency to be quite independent of what your senses report." What reality moved the Lord Leto?
Idaho looked at Siona standing against the orchard background and the green hills of Goygoa. "Let's go down to the village and find our quarters. I'd like to be alone."
"The Fish Speakers will put us in the same quarters."
"With them?"
"No, just the two of us together. The reason's simple enough. The Worm wants me to breed with the great Duncan Idaho."
"I pick my own partners," Idaho growled.
"I'm sure one of our Fish Speakers would be delighted," Siona said. She whirled away from him and set off down the hill.
Idaho watched her for a
moment, the lithe young body swaying like the limbs of the orchard trees in the wind.
"I'm not his stud," Idaho muttered. "That's one thing he'll have to understand."
As each day passes, you become increasingly unreal, more alien and remote from what I find myself to be on that new day. I am the only reality and, as you differ from me, you lose reality. The more curious I become, the less curious are those who worship me. Religion suppresses curiosity. What I do subtracts from the worshipper. Thus it is that eventually I will do nothing, giving it all back to frightened people who will find themselves on that day alone and forced to act for themselves.
